The present invention relates generally to irrigation water management. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system, method and software program product for creating an accurate irrigation water need model and utilizing the irrigation watering model for evaluating the efficiency of an irrigation system.
Irrigation systems are extremely well known and useful mechanisms for providing for the watering needs of turf, plants and other types of foliage above the amount that is naturally available from precipitation. In this increasingly urbanized world, a customized landscape of turf, ornamentals and meticulously placed trees can inspire the illusion of mood for residents, employees and even passersby to the property. The proper management of campus green space can not only increase the value of the property, but also create an environment more conducive to home-ownership. Properly designed it can increase the productivity of workers, suggest an expansive showground for sportsmen and provide a relaxed and open setting for shoppers. However, green space is not inexpensive. Premium turf grass may cost upwards of $40,000 per acre (over $60,000 for special purpose facilities like golf courses and other types of fee-based sports complexes). Landscape trees are three to four times the cost of turf and the cost of shrubbery, ornamentals and landscape plants may exceed the cost of turf by ten fold. A facility may allocate $5,000-$20,000 per acre monthly for maintaining a premium landscape, with the cost of irrigation water consuming up to half of the maintenance budget.
As a consequence, during construction most facilities devote significant resources to the professional design and installation of irrigation systems, and most acquire reasonably state of the art irrigation components. The objective is for the irrigation system to operate trouble-free for a number of years prior to re-evaluating the system and its components. The affirmation of these objectives is further reinforced by the unsurpassed reliability of many professional grade irrigation components. The life expectancy of professional grade electronic irrigation controllers and spray heads exceed ten years, excluding failures due to lightning or damage. Even the more failure prone irrigation components, such as irrigation valves, regularly provide a maintenance free service for over five years. The fallacy in this thinking is that a single irrigation component failure or even operating inefficiently may skew the operating efficiency of the entire system, thereby wasting valuable water resources and costing the property owner much more than might have been spent on a comprehensive maintenance program.
For many commercial properties, a groundskeeper is responsible for maintaining the irrigations system. It's not uncommon for a commercial property, such as a shopping center, corporate headquarters or a commercial or public office building to operate multiple irrigation controllers, each irrigation controller is connected to multiple irrigation zones, usually between 24 and 48 zones. Thus, the groundskeeper may be responsible for the well being of plants in several hundred separate irrigation zones. Since the prime concern is the aesthetics, the operator adjusts the irrigation time duration for each zone sufficiently long to avoid wilting or browning. If the plants in a zone appear to be under watered, the groundskeeper increases the irrigating duration for that zone until the plants appear healthy. To a large extent, monitoring the operation of the irrigation system is often relegated to checking the appearance of the plants, turf and other greenery in the irrigation zones. The expense of the irrigation water is often ignored until budget time or unless the occurrence of a catastrophic failure, such as a pipe break. By then, the damage of an inefficiently operated irrigation system may have already been done.
What is needed is a comprehensive metric which would enable the property owner to gauge the historic efficiency of the irrigation system. Furthermore, what is needed is a dynamic irrigation model that would enable a property owner to compare the actual irrigation water used at the property to an estimate of the plants' water needs. Finally, what is needed is an uncomplicated mechanism that would enable a property owner to tract costs, in water amounts and money, and to project the return on investment for upgrades to more environmentally friendly irrigation components.